Vodka by Minsk Grape Wines Factory, edited by NK News
A Singaporean who assisted in the purchase of 15,600 bottles of Belarusian vodka seized en route to North Korea has prior connections to the country, a NK News investigation following the latest United Nations Panel of Experts (PoE) report shows.
Jordan Cheang – who also goes by the name Zheng Shi Qiang – was implicated in the purchase of at least $14,160 worth of vodka from a manufacturer in Belarus through his company Aspen Resources Pte Ltd in September, 2018.
Spirits are considered by some UN member states, including Singapore, as a luxury good prohibited from export to North Korea.
Nevertheless, his firm paid for the vodka – destined to the DPRK via Dalian, China – “at the request” of an acquaintance known only as “Ms. Li,” information from the last two PoE reports show.
Ms. Li was allegedly unable to pay due to “problems paying out from China due to currency controls,” meaning Cheang’s firm paid the Belarusian spirits manufacturer “on behalf of the buyer, Hongkong Jiaming Industrial Co,” the latest report shows.
The role played by Cheang’s Aspen firm – a “human resources company” – was described in the latest PoE report as an example of how North Korea is able to continue “to access global banking through shell and front companies”.
SUPERMARKET AND SOCIAL CLUB
Whether or not Cheang was aware that the vodka his firm was paying for would ultimately go to North Korea, a NK News investigation shows that he has longtime connections to the country.
And that might explain why his company was approached by the so-called “Ms. Li” to facilitate the deal in the first place.
Profiled by the journal BizQ in July 2016, Cheang said he first visited North Korea in 2011 as part of a trade mission there.
Soon after, he used his “frontier market” distribution firm Mekong International to begin exporting “food and daily necessities such as cooking oil, biscuits, beverages, milk, coffee and toiletries to the DPRK.”
Cheang insisted his objectives were not “purely commercial,” because his trade with the DPRK also had “social intent”.
Business was good enough to draw up plans for a Pyongyang supermarket and social club, he said in the BizQ interview.
And following an investment of a “seven-figure sum in U.S. dollars,” Cheang went on to open the four-story “Benata Business Centre” in Pyongyang in 2013, also claiming ownership of a second supermarket in a “technology and research” neighborhood, an article by TODAYonlinesaid in June 2018.
It is unclear if he managed the Benata Business Centre and his supermarkets as J/Vs, though that is typically required when foreigners own or operate a DPRK-based business.
But after Singapore suspended all commercial trade with the North in November 2017, Cheang said he was forced to make changes.
“We had to stop trading directly with North Korea,” he told TODAYonline, without revealing what had happened to his “seven-figure” investments there.
Despite ceasing “trading directly” to his trade locations in Pyongyang in late 2017, Singaporean connections to the Benata Business Centre continued to prevail in the months after Cheang’s June 2018 interview.
In September 2018, the same month the PoE said Aspen paid for the thousands of bottles of vodka, a delegation of Singaporean businesspeople went to North Korea for exploratory meetings.
Notably, one of the delegation’s facilitators seen in photos was Dr. Michael Mun, described as “North Korean representative of economic and trade affairs in Singapore” and himself connected to Cheang.
Mun’s LinkedIn account lists Mun as a former consultant to a Singaporean company called Beneta Pte Ltd, and prior study at the “People’s University of Economics in Pyongyang”.
And besides being a namesake of the “Benata” Business Centre, Beneta Pte Ltd. is a firm which Jordan Cheang was himself listed as director of until it was gazetted to be struck off Singaporean corporate records on April 1, 2020.
According to a September 2018 TODAYonline article covering the delegation’s visit to Pyongyang, the owner of the Sentosa Business Center “[had] gone on an indefinite hiatus since November [2017], leaving his North Korean general manager, Madam Ju Sun-bok, to run it on her own.”
Professor Michael Heng, a Singaporean who went on that delegation, told NK News he asked Mme. Ju to put him in touch with the owner of Sentosa Business Center, who he affirmed was Jordan Cheang.
Despite efforts to make contact, Heng said Cheang “wisely avoided me,” something which “in hindsight…could be a good thing on both sides” .
For if Cheang “had continued the trading, that would have been in violation of sanctions,” Heng said.
Cheang would have had to suspend all commercial trade with the DPRK by November 2017 to be compliant with Singaporean unilateral sanctions, and withdrawn from all joint-ventures (J/V) by January 2018 to be compliant with UN Security Council Resolution 2375.
Fellow Singaporean firm SUTL Corporation (North East Asia) Pte. Ltd told NK News’s sister site NK Pro in December 2017 it did just that when faced with the same sanctions, but didn’t reveal what happened to its stake in a J/V tobacco firm which earned USD$5.3 million in profit in 2015.
And when called by NK News for comment about his current connections to the DRPK, Cheang suggested he had followed suit, but without mentioning what had happened to his “seven-figure” investments in Pyongyang.
“We haven’t done business there for many years, sorry, no comment,” he said before hanging up and refusing all subsequent NK News attempts at contact.
Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also declined to comment, having provided no answers to all NK News questions sent about North Korea-related issues since September, 2018.
A CHINESE PROXY?
The September 2018 timing of the payment for the vodka, in light of the ongoing Singaporean connections to the Sentosa Business Center the very same month, is notable.
Back in his June 2018 interview with TODAYonline, Cheang said that after suspending “trading directly with North Korea,” his “local operators there (now) source their wares from other Chinese firms.”
To ensure compliance with Singapore’s 2017 export ban – which also forbids indirect transactions – Cheang’s partners would have had to import foreign goods through PRC-based grey market dealers totally unrelated to him.
While Hongkong Jiaming Industrial Co – the firm Cheang purchased the vodka for – is registered in Hong Kong, the PoE report showed the cargo was to be shipped to Dalian, a port close to the Chinese-DPRK border and the likely transshipment site.
Furthermore, company documents seen by NK News list the firm’s director Li Bao Jian’s address as the small town of Ningyangzhen in Shandong, a northern Chinese province across the narrow Yellow Sea from Dalian and the DPRK.
Li’s self-reported addresses in Shandong stands out from most Hong Kong company directors, who hold addresses in Hong Kong or cities in the southern province of Guangdong.
A key question is whether Hongkong Jiaming Industrial Co was a company established by or connected to Cheang’s former partners in Pyongyang.
Such an acquisition process – through PRC-based intermediaries – has been seen in prior Singapore-related luxury goods investigations.
Fellow Singaporean business director Ng “Leo” Kheng Wah told local media he’d suspended trade with North Korea in 2012, but an NK Pro investigation showed luxury goods linked to his OCN and T Specialist companies were still readily available in North Korea in 2017.
Instead of continuing direct shipments to the North as UNSC sanctions tightened in the years following his 2012 “exit” from the market, Ng’s network of companies instead delivered luxury goods to a network of front companies in China, which in turn transshipped them on to North Korea.
Singaporean investigations ultimately proved that while Ng initially said he didn’t know where his Chinese clients were ultimately selling his goods, he actually did know they were going to North Korea.
As far as Cheang’s relationship with Hongkong Jiaming Industrial Co goes, and the latter’s corporate connections to North Korea, PoE investigations are ongoing.
“The importer has not replied,” said the latest report about UN efforts to further understand what happened.
A Singaporean who assisted in the purchase of 15,600 bottles of Belarusian vodka seized en route to North Korea has prior connections to the country, a NK News investigation following the latest United Nations Panel of Experts (PoE) report shows.
Jordan Cheang – who also goes by the name Zheng Shi Qiang – was implicated in the purchase of at least $14,160 worth of vodka from a manufacturer in Belarus through his company Aspen Resources Pte Ltd in September, 2018.
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Chad O'Carroll is the founder of NK News/NK Pro and related holding company Korea Risk Group. In addition to being the group's CEO, O'Carroll is a frequent writer and commentator about the Koreas, having written about the two nations since 2010. He has visited the DPRK multiple times, worked and lived in Washington, D.C. with a focus on peninsula issues, and lived in the ROK since 2016.
Min Chao Choy is a data journalist for NK News and NK Pro. Choy specializes in news and analysis relating to DPRK shipping and aviation movements, sanctions, and cyber-security.